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Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Master_Keralys, Jan 1, 2009.

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  1. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

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    Jul 2, 2004
    Oswald.
     
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  2. RC-1991

    RC-1991 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 2, 2009
    So, on my current Europa Barbarorum campaign, the Greek city-states have made a bit of a comeback... by taking the Crimea and Ukraine from the Sauromatae.
     
  3. Point Given

    Point Given Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 12, 2006
    Wait, when does he do this?
     
  4. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    I like that they have the Greeks use Attic (except for the Spartans who use Doric) but it's really hard playing as them because I can't get my head around the ahistoricity of a koinon hellonon -- it existed, but certainly not as a unified entity with a uniform treasury. They did the best that they could within the limitations of the engine but... well, I'm looking forward to EB2 or RTW2 (whichever comes first).

    Also: hats in 9 days!
     
  5. RC-1991

    RC-1991 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 2, 2009
    He makes a joke to Alayne about how he wishes that he could have 5 more years to build his intrigues while Cersei gradually pushes the Seven Kingdoms to hell, instead of Cersei making things collapse faster than anyone could anticipate. It's in Alayne's last chapter IIRC.

    @GrandAdmiralJello- Yeah, I imagine that the Greek city states in R2TW will play a bit like the German states in Empire and Napoleon, except with a little more unit diversity between states. Not much- maybe a few semi-unique units for each represented state- but a little more than just changing the flag.

    And I'm just thrilled that my units are responding to me in Latin :D
     
  6. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    Yes, you could learn well from them. Consider it practice! Sometimes the pronunciation is a bit off, but the EB team did their best to coach the actors in the proper pronunciation that they had to use. One of my favorite things to do is listen to the "σοματοφλαυκες στρατγου" unit between the various Hellenic and Hellenistic factions because they took the time to realize that the different dialects of Greek pronounced dipthongs, contracts, and upsilons differently. It is so marvelously classical in Attic, but the Seleucid pronunciation is so hilariously lowbrow.

    And iirc they said something about having like 400 units in the game or something, so it's possible each city state will at LEAST have a unique set of hoplites and not just recolors.
     
  7. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004
    If they make the Greeks all independent „nations“ they would have to sort of do the same for many of the “Barbarians”, though more realistic it would sort off cut down the factions that could actually stand up to the Romans, unless they get some really fancy “racial hegemony alliance” system implemented. Though my major hope is that they get a nice auxiliary/ mercenaries system were you can just raise them in cities you own (troops varying by region) and/or hire them freely like in Rome.
     
  8. RC-1991

    RC-1991 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 2, 2009
    I like Europa Barbarorum's recruitment system, with certain units only being available in your home region (Camillan and Polybian Roman units can only be built in Italy, for example) while others can only be recruited as auxiliaries out in the provinces- with mercenary troops varying in their recruitment regions. I don't really see a problem with all of the barbarians being their own "nations"- it would be similar to Shogun II, where ever region had its own clan (well, almost). Empire and Napoleon had a similar system, with smaller nations (especially the emergent factions such as Scotland, Hungary, and Mexico) were their own nations on the campaign map, rather than simply being rebels.

    Which reminds me, I would love to see a Medieval III with an American campaign that takes place centuries prior to the conquest. The minor nations mechanic from the newer Total War games could be used to more accurately depict the loose Mayan confederations of the Yucatan, as well as some of the other cultures within the region.
     
  9. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Yep, which worked pretty well from what I could remember.

    The problem in Shogun 2 is that you can pretty quickly just crush your enemy by superior numbers once you have reached 4-5 provinces, because the other clans are unlikely to ever get much bigger (though it will vary, I had to battle the Dante clan which had somehow expanded to 32 provinces once). If Rome 2 had the one nation one city thing they would have to have them make more binding alliances and be able to pool troops, as otherwise it would be kind of hard for them to be able to even remotely stand up to the Romans, which would presumably be the ones that actually have several cities that do pool troops because they are considered one nation.
     
  10. RC-1991

    RC-1991 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 2, 2009
    Well, historically, that tended to be how things played out in many instances. The Gauls never united, except for a brief moment at the end of the Gallic Wars where Vercingetorix lead a majority of them in a revolt against the Romans, which was of course crushed at Alesia. It would provide an imperative for expansion to players who are playing as a Gallic tribe, or one of the Greek city states, to unite and form a strong military base before the Romans finish off the Carthaginians. And I've seen single-city nations spam multiple armies before- Saxony always does this to me whenever I play as the Prussians on Empire.

    As for Shogun, heh, twice have I seen the AI declare itself to be Shogun. Silly AI. Though I've been using the Radious Total War mod lately, which definitely allows for more armies and larger armies.
     
  11. Zeta1127

    Zeta1127 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    0 A.D., a free, open source, RTS game of ancient warfare, does an excellent job of showing diversity between all of the civilizations in the game. They don't have all of the Greek city-states, but they have a good sampling of civilizations from 500 B.C. to 1 B.C., specifically the Hellenic States (the Athenians, the Spartans, and the Macedonians), the Celtic Tribes (the Britons and the Gauls), the Carthaginians, the Achaemenid Persians, the Iberians, and the Romans (the Republicans), with more civilizations from 1 A.D. to 500 A.D. planned in the future. The game is currently in alpha, but a new alpha is usually released every two or three months; the Mauryan Indians should be finished for the next alpha.
     
  12. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    lol first day of class, and my professor is like "Nice to have you in a class again . . . can you help translate something into Latin for me?" I guess my reputation precedes me. :p

    Also: I'm happy to report that I survived the whole Star Wars RPG thing. The adventure was... a little whacky, especially since I insisted on playing this insipid Imperial aristocratic buffoon. I really wanted to play a "tiny-minded Imperial twit" to its fullest potential. :D I can tell the story if anybody's interested, though I don't want to just throw in a wall of text if people aren't.
     
  13. Lugija

    Lugija Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2009
    Please do. I'm one of those people who really want to play a Pen and Paper RPG but who have no means to properly play. I am actually currently re-reading The One Ring rulebook, which I bought just before I went to the army. The only other person in the town who I know likes RPGs was put into a leadership school in the army and will teach the next patch of soldiers for the next six months. Hopefully when I start the university in autumn I will have no shortage of equal-minded nerd-mates.
     
  14. RC-1991

    RC-1991 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 2, 2009
    I'd love to hear the story, Jello. I've been trying my two best friends to do a game of Middle Earth Role Playing, that crazy LotR RPG from the 90s, since they are both big Tolkien fans.

    Zeta1127 , I'll have to give that a look sometime.
     
  15. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Random note: congressman's office just called, I'll be going to the inauguration again. Hope it turns out better than last time (long story!).

    OK, RPG story time: We decided to play the Saga d20, WotC's last SW game. We have a bit of an issue in that I know far more about SW than anybody, but they all have far more experience than I... so we decided to get a demo game running to get me familiar with it, and then we might consider whether or not I would be a DM myself or not. So the game consisted of the DM, a friend who's familiar with EU, and I.

    My friend was playing somebody from the Jedi Academy sb (I mocked it for its continuity issues and "General Ackbar" -- he didn't get it. :( I feel that Hell is a land devoid of true EU enthusiasts!), a non-affiliated Force user thing from the Order of the Sky who punches things or something.

    I, thinking the Force is boring and having no use for it whatsoever, played a secular character. I never got to name him (I was thinking something like Fons Honoris or something as a play on Finis Valorum, which is doubly fun because he could go by Fonzie to his friends :p ) but he was a level 1 noble. I won't bore you with his stats except to say that the lowest dice role was a 7, and I left that to strength (which befuddled my friends, until I explained that as an aristocrat, he has people to beat things for him). Under Saga, you have "talent trees" just like a video game, and apparently nobles can pick from Leadership (makes your allies better at killing things), Inspiration (makes your allies last long), or Lineage (gives you inborn advantages). My friends were like "why are we bothering to read this to him... we all know that he's going to pick Lineage." They were right. I had a choice between a starting talent of Educated (which apparently lets you use all of the various "Knowledge" skills as if you picked them as your trained skills) or Wealth (gives you 5000 credits per level). I wanted to pick Educated but I thought that it would make more sense to pick Wealth now and pick up Educated later -- like my guy suddenly remembered that he went to the University of Alderaan or something. :p

    So then I picked my skills. I decided to build the most idle, useless sort of noble to an adventuring party but one who would be excellently suited for court intrigue. Thus, my skills were: Deception, Gather Information, Persuasion, Perception, Ride (who needs piloting?! People of substance ride horses!), Knowledge (Bureaucracy), Knowledge (Social Science), Knowledge (Galactic Lore), and Treat Injury (just to be practical for once). Apparently nobles get an absurd amount of skills. My friend, a soldier, got half as many.

    I also automatically got the Linguist feat, which I promptly used to learn the most obscure and arcane languages I could think of, including High Galactic. To his credit, my friend at least knew what that was. But he only gets partial credit since it's listed in the rulebooks, and I know he's read those at least. I also have some automatic weapon proficiencies in pistols and things, but I decided to use my 2 starting feats on weapon finesse and an exotic melee weapon... which one? Why, a lightfoil of course -- and not just any lightfoil, but an archaic one!

    You see, we calculated our wealth: my soldier friend starts out with 1,400 credits. I started out with 7,800, and will get 10,000 the next level, 15,000 more the next, etc. mmm money. So I had to blow it on absurd things like an ELG 3a sporting blaster (they have a green laser and an awesome pew pew sound, plus a very choice mahogany handle) and that archaic lightfoil. I still had some money left over, and so I used it to buy hats. Lots of hats. Still having about 3k left over, the DM suggested that I should get a commlink. But those were only 25 credits -- if I spent 5x that amount, I could get a holographic commlink. That still left me with a lot of money though, so I decided that I would get an orbital-range commlink, because I am just that important. Unfortunately, those are huge and involve a harness and a backpack. How ghastly! So I decided to go with something less gauche and paid top credit to have it miniaturized to the size of a wrist-chrono... we spared no expense!

    The DM's original scenario, a crash-landing on some planet, was then voided by my choice of an awesome commlink so the scenario was changed to a hunting expedition near my family's estate (though I wanted to be Coruscanti, I decided this scenario fit the hunting story from the Lords of the Expanse WEG sb and decided that I was Tapani, which goes well with the lightfoil thing. My friends just smiled and nodded). The DM asked me for an example of a creature I could hunt, and I said wookiees. He looked at me like I was a horrible person and said no sentient creatures! And I said actually, the Imperial Zoological Commission has recently reclassified them as non-sentient so there's no problem. He just said "NO!" (what a jerk, right? :( ). So I suggested a Gundark. He looked up the stats and said "yeah this thing will kill you. What else?" So we settled for a Ronto.

    So he set up the scene: we were on top of a cliff, overlooking a forest. We were in a rented family speeder -- the stats were for an XP-34 until I protested that nobody of our stature would have such a preposterously outdated vehicle (my friends were again confused). We heard some rustling in the trees, so we did a perception check. Mine was incredibly low -- I justified it by saying that I was lounging in the back seat of the speeder and didn't care. My friend, who we decided was my retainer, noticed the ronto and took a shot at it with his rifle, critically hitting it. Then they said it was my turn again, and so I used my commlink to order an orbital bombardment. They looked at me like I was insane and said that I don't have a Star Destroyer on call, no matter how wealthy I am. I informed them that Grand Admiral Grant was my third cousin four times removed and that he would surely heed my call, but the DM told me that Grand Admiral Grant was currently unavailable because he was doing... well anything he could be doing would be more important than this. I said fiiine, and they suggested using my "move action" to aim so that I could get a dice rolling bonus on my "attack action." I decided that they were being absurd, and so I used my move action to idly smoke a cigarra while shooting vaguely in the direction of the noise like a true gentleman would. I still hit the creature, of course -- did you think somebody of my breeding would miss? The creature roared and lumbered in our direction, because it was clearly an idiot (and that's what the dice roll had it do). My retainer then shot and killed the beast, which upset me greatly since it was my job to slay the animal, so I thwacked him upside the head (sadly doing no damage to his hp). I used my commlink to call the estate and ask them to mount the beast's head in my room.

    On the way back, we encountered some sort of lizard. My friend was formulating an attack plan while I was trying to think of a good species of lizard to use, an dsettled on some sort of feather lizard from Pzob. We didn't have stats for it, but the DM made them up. The retainer asked for my orders, and I said "ram it" -- my friends looked at me like I was crazy, but I was the lord here and this demo game was for my benefit, so they went along with it. Sadly the dice roll lead to a mere glancing blow. On my turn, my friends suggested getting out of the speeder so I could get a flanking bonus. I said "how pedestrian!" and indicated that I would be staying onboard like a properly cultivated individual. I decided to take a swig of brandy before swinging out with my lightfoil -- apparently this caused a "to hit" penalty and my slice completely missed the mark. My retainer kicked it in the head, and on the following turn I slew it with my lightfoil. Then we heard the sounds of other lizard beasts in large numbers approaching from the woods -- my friend suggested that we leave, but I said "silence! I am taking a myhyperspace holograph with my commlink showing me and the feathered beast I just slew!" So whilst I used up our turn, the lizards burst from the forest and attacked our vehicle.


    TO BE CONTINUED!!
     
  16. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    ...but the inauguration story is too long?
     
  17. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    I said that it would be a wall of text! I'm a detailed storyteller dammit.
     
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  18. krtmd

    krtmd Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2012
    Did you get trapped in a tunnel or something? Inauguration story, I mean.
     
  19. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    I did get trapped, but thankfully I was *not* among the people trapped in the 3rd Street tunnel -- I was trapped in open air at least, although with the crowds there I could scarcely breath anyway.
     
  20. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    Moar updates, please. And just as in depth. I was MOST ENTERTAINED.
     
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  21. s65horsey

    s65horsey Otter-loving Former EUC Mod star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 24, 2006
    I agree, I giggled several times. Please continue, Jello.
     
  22. Mirax Terrik

    Mirax Terrik Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 11, 2000
    Agreed, more updates are required.
     
  23. Blithe

    Blithe Jedi Master star 4

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    Jun 24, 2003
    Yes. More please. :D
     
  24. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 29, 2005
    This is way better than anything they're publishing these days.
     
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  25. Zeta1127

    Zeta1127 Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Sep 2, 2012
    The 0 A.D. website is play0ad.com, I am on the forums there under the same name.
     
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